Obama, Cameron and their juniors have been quick to condemn the Russians for allegedly making no distinction between IS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and other militant Islamists in Syria, and those ‘opposition’ forces backed half heartedly by the West. All of them are anti Assad, but the Islamists are anti almost everybody and especially the West, Iran and Russia.
One of the problems with all the disastrous interventions of the West and the string of failed states which has resulted, is that there has never been clarity on who the enemy is. We end up fighting factions and splinters and supporting governments with no proper mandate to govern, no ability to uphold the law or keep the peace. Russia senses real danger if IS is not checked and fears a link-up with an increasing bold Taliban in northern Afghanistan which can spill northwest towards Russia and Chechnya.
Russian military doctrine has always been much more outcome focussed than that of western allies and it is determined to try and avoid the failure of Syria as a state. Assad and his regime, whatever their faults and they have never tried to threaten the West or its interests, is the only combination that looks remotely like a coherent government in Syria and Russia therefore regards its survival as critical to the survival of the Syrian state. The alternative for sure is IS in Damascus.
Russia has said that it goes along with the political wing of the Free Syrian Army taking part in a political settlement, but it will not offer their military wing, such as it is, any immunity from attack on the ground, during the campaign to disable all the various anti-government elements opposing Assad, of which IS is the largest and most dangerous. We cannot tell if the Russian strategy will work, nor if they will succeed in bringing about by force a climate in which a political settlement becomes realistic. Since the West’s own effort has failed and is going nowhere, it might be best if its politicians shut up, for the time being at least. If Russia, too, fails there will be an opportunity to say something.
The American led coalition, which has so many members it is all but meaningless, wants both IS and Assad to lose. But for that to happen there has to be a winner. And the problem for the West is that there is no such organisation in the field. Just a pipe dream. Russia has worked that out. That is why it has intervened.